Since its origins, science fiction has defied easy categorization. Even the notion of “the origin” of science fiction is by no means settled. Some might say science fiction truly began with Hugo Gernsback (from whom the science fiction literary award “the Hugo” is named) when he coined the term “scientifiction” in 1916. Others, like Lester Del Rey, go back a bit further to around 2000 BCE with the epic of Gilgamesh.
Whenever this genre truly started, it has been a boundary-pushing one. All fiction does at some level concern itself with not what is but what could be: science fiction, however, takes this notion and extrapolates it much further. Because of this, much science-fiction tends towards progressivism. The genre is simply too expansive to reduce it to merely a “left wing” phenomenon–there are many, many examples of more conservative texts that seek to reinforce more traditional and time-honored (or perhaps time-worn) values and ideologies. This essay will not attempt to argue that science fiction is ultimately this thing or that thing–rather, I’ll be looking at what I am going to call the careful progressivism of popular science fiction.
Like any literary genre that has reached popular acclaim, science fiction has a dizzying array of texts, films, and franchises ranging from the obscure to the culturally embedded. “May the Force be with you” and “Beam me up” have become common phrases in English parlance, and no matter where one stands on the continuum of science fiction geekdom, almost everyone in America knows who Darth Vader is or who Mr. Spock is. So let’s look at the latter example and how it has at once advanced progressive ideas while at the same time reinforced more conservative ones.
The Star Trek universe began humbly enough–in February of 1965, American television audiences saw for the first time the Starship Enterprise and met its intrepid crew, though only one of the original characters, the aforementioned Mr. Spock, would continue on to the second pilot.
Mr. Spock, the vaguely devilish alien-human hybrid, would immediately cause a clash with the network, as would the ship’s second-in-command, a female officer called simply “Number One.” (The actress playing Number One, Majel Barrett, was later recast as Nurse Chapel when the show was retooled and picked up) Here we have perhaps the first example of the careful progressivism of the show: the network passed on the pilot but made the unusual move of requesting a second pilot, though they demanded some changes. One of them involved both the Spock character and Number One. The network balked at having two controversial characters–Mr. Spock’s alien appearance and Number One’s, well, womanhood. They did not like Spock’s devilish look, nor did they like the idea of a woman being second in command. They essentially told the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, he had to choose between them. He chose Spock, and the notion of a strong woman, second in command on the starship Enterprise in the mid 1960’s, died.
Once the show was picked up and found its stride, Roddenberry made several casting choices that, on the surface, appeared to have been very progressive. George Takei was cast as helmsman Sulu, and the character was not played as a stereotypical Japanese man–Sulu was not an inscrutable Asian caricature who espoused homespun Confucian wisdom, nor did he speak with an affected Japanese accent. In fact, in one memorable scene, a foppish alien named Trelane bows to Sulu and calls him “honorable sir.” Sulu is clearly irritated by this and mutters sotto voce “is he kidding?” In another episoide, when Sulu goes mad due to some spaceborne poisoning, he charges around the ship shirtless wielding an epee while he’s pretending to be a musketeer. So, again, on the surface, this is a progressive bit of casting in the mid-1960’s, especially considering World War II had ended only twenty years ago and the U.S. was involved in Asiatic conflicts.
Before we congratulate Star Trek too much on how well it crafted the character of Sulu, however, bear in mind that in many hand-to-hand combat scenes involving the character he uses what I can only guess is karate or some other Asian martial arts style. So while the show took pains to scrub any conventional stereotypes from Sulu’s character, they felt that they had to have some nod to his Japanese background and make him karate-chop bad guys. This is what I mean by careful progressivism.
In another bold casting move, in the second season the show added the young navigator Pavel Chekov to the crew, played by Walter Koening. Chekov was added mainly because of the increasing popularity of young rock stars like the Beatles or the Monkees. Koening was even given a wig to make him look even more like Davy Jones, though this was abandoned later. The boldness of the move was not casting a young person on the show–rather, the officer was quite distinctly Russian in accent and national pride. Creating a Russian officer for the Enterprise in 1967, a mere five years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, was indeed a bold move. Again, though, this seemingly progressive posture was undermined by the characterization of Chekov as an almost comically prideful Russian whose revisionist history–which invariably favored Russia–was the butt of many jokes on the show.
One cannot speak of progressive casting on Star Trek without mentioning the chief communications officer, Lieutenant Uhura, played by Nichelle Nichols. Nichols was part of the cast from the beginning of the show proper, and her role was not insignificant. Her character’s African descent was frequently mentioned, most notably her fluency with Swahili. After a year on the show, Nichols was considering quitting the show after the first season in the late 1960’s, but was told someone wanted to meet her, claiming to be her biggest fan. That person convinced her to stay on the show, claiming she was a vital role model for all Black Americans.
That person was Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Whoopi Goldberg, who would join the Star Trek franchise as the supporting character Guinan on Star Trek: The Next Generation, remembers watching the original series and exclaiming to her mother, “I just saw a black woman on television and she ain’t no maid!”
In 2012, Nichols met with President Barack Obama in the White House’s Oval Office. He admitted not only was he a “trekkie” but that he had had a crush on her when he was younger.
Uhura, as much as any other supporting character, made important plot and character contributions to the show, but the most impactful moment for Uhura and Nichols was the famous “kiss.” In the episode “Plato’s Stepchildren,” broadcast on November 22, 1968, Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner, gives a passionate, fully-on-the-lips kiss to Uhura, in glorious extreme close-up with swelling music. The network originally had planned to shoot both a “kiss” and “non-kiss” version to see which one it preferred, but both Nichols and Shatner purposefully flubbed the “non-kiss” shots to force the network to use the kiss.
The thing is–despite all this groundbreaking stuff–according to the plot, both Kirk and Uhura were being controlled by cruel telekenetic humanoids who “forced” them to kiss. In order to get this black-and-white kiss on the air, the show had to make it something that Kirk would never, ever do under ordinary conditions. Once again, careful progressivism.
To be continued…
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